


Gestalt

by Sanguinity (DirectorShellhead)



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirectorShellhead/pseuds/Sanguinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tussle between various de Lioncourt siblings and its result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gestalt

He is curly, tow-headed, and all of three, a succinct soft-edged round-limbed little package containing a man yet to become himself, and all that’s to do now is lose certain pieces along the way while others fall into the shape of a life.

He loses one piece when two of the older boys barge in and disrupt him where he sits, in his sister’s lap playing with a carved wooden pony, which clatters to the cold stone floor in a pattern of sounds that he remembers for too long afterward but can’t understand why. Such a disjointed thing to have stuck in his no-longer-baby brain, the dull thunking of that haphazard wood.

Her shrieks go past indignant and into the high pitch of a girl’s rage as his brothers tug at her, as much with laughter as with hands, and though it’s all too fast for him to track, he knows what torment sounds like because he’s learned to make those noises. Sometimes they sound like laughter; other times, like pain.

And he finds himself crying for all the confusion and for the fact of her upset, because it hurts him too, loving her as he does, simply and wholly, honestly, safely. So too it hurts when the boys crush the pony underfoot and stand over him to wait for his wailing to increase, poking at each other in a way that seems like language. But he quiets, and their faces scream disappointment loud enough for him to cower. The anguish sticks in his throat; he feels the tears drip down toward his chin and he feels a shiver that he can’t recognize as his own while he watches her tear after them, her gentle hands turned into flying, frightening things, little balls of fury flung at her leering brothers' faces.

The rest is all loudness and vibration at a pace that tunes him out by force, so he turns and tries to collect the pieces of his pony from the floor. Careful, painstakingly careful, he is—or tries to be. But he is angry, too angry for precision, and so he throws the splinters at the wall and stomps and rages in the very best way he knows how, all flailing limbs and an unchecked voice until the nurse comes and contains him inside her ample, resolved arms.

He loses the part of himself that intuits another way of things, another breed of natural, because it has not been fed enough with fact and example. So it shrinks away, a starved thing, and dies without him knowing it, and instead, another piece locks into place in his mind. And the world, his little world of castle walls and shrieking siblings and frightening, unexpected, tumultuous interruptions—it starts to make sense again. His tiny tender neurons don’t have to struggle against the incongruity because they have recreated it as normalcy.

He tucks this new schema away in a safe place, where it won’t be damaged or lost, where he can rely on it whenever he watches those he loves act and react with and around him; it’s there, a solid thing, immutable, proven, exemplified, an absolute truth.


End file.
